10/13/2009 @ 6:00PM

Best iPhone Apps For Business Networkers

Once upon a time, everyone who was anyone had a social secretary, a person dedicated solely to maintaining the boss’s personal network. Social secretaries made appointments, cultivated the Rolodex, managed correspondence and generally kept their plugged-in patrons up to date with the goings-on of all their friends and associates. The heyday of that profession has long since passed, but the need for those organizational skills has only grown as would-be networkers confront a mountain of daily interactions and entirely new forms of social networking. It’s time to meet your new social secretary: your iPhone.

While stress-testing thousands of software titles for my book Best iPhone Apps, I uncovered several essential apps that perform the various duties of the dearly departed social secretary, improving on the original with Internet-era panache. Put them together, and you get the 10 best apps for business networkers, on display here for your contact-amassing pleasure.

It’s no wonder the iPhone is such an effective sidekick for super networkers. The device puts a capable computer behind your contact list and mixes in GPS, wi-fi, Bluetooth, Web browsing and, you might have heard, even a telephone. The apps in this top 10 list put these abilities to special use to create a networking power tool, an outboard social engine to surface insights and draw connections in your network that you might not have spotted otherwise.

The best networkers know that the job is not so much about trying to grow your network as tending the one you’ve got–growth will follow naturally. “Contacts Journal,” for example, is an app that helps you do just that by logging your conversations and meetings as well as keeping tabs on people-specific tasks, even favors given and owed. At a glance, you’re able to see your entire personal history with a specific contact, including when you last spoke and what you said.

Other apps specialize in helping you find the right people when you need them. The Groups app sorts and organizes your contacts with a sophistication lacking in the built-in Contacts app, filtering and browsing contacts by company, city, even birthday. Dopplr helps you connect with friends and colleagues while you travel, letting you know when your trip will bring you close to someone in your network, even when they’re traveling, too. LinkedIn helps you find people you haven’t even met yet, exploring your extended network to find friend-of-friend connections with the know-how you’re looking for. When you’re ready to set a meeting, MeetMe is a clever app for finding a good spot midway between two addresses. After the meeting, Mover makes it easy to pass along your virtual business card.

Good social secretaries not only keep you organized, they also keep you connected and in the know. Other must-have networking apps give you elegant interfaces to new communication networks (Twitterrific for Twitter, BeejiveIM for instant messaging), while others help you work more effectively by keeping you informed (Feeds for reading web feeds, TED for mind-expanding video).